Further reforms announced by the New South Wales government will assist in meeting the state’s housing goals, despite the low number of homes delivered in 2022.
The New South Wales Government is determined to meet the state’s 377,000 housing goal under the five year housing accord, and the major reforms introduced in December 2023 will serve this goal.
NSW Minister for Planning, Paul Scully, said “We are reforming planning rules to support the delivery of thousands of new homes and a pipeline of housing supply into the future, and are determined to meet our housing goals.”
While the reforms will take time to effect significant housing uplift, the changes will deliver hundreds of thousands of well-located, well-designed and well-built homes close to transport, jobs, services and amenity over the coming years.
All advice and industry feedback is that these reforms will have the impact on housing uplift that New South Wales needs.
The state government has been clear that while building 75,000 new homes off a base of only 48,000 completions in 2022 will be a big challenge, the reforms from December 2023 will play an integral role in meeting the state’s housing goals.
“The New South Wales Government is starting from a long way back but has taken immediate action to turn around housing completions of the incredibly low base of only 48,000 homes delivered in 2022,” Minister Scully said.
These reforms include:
- Changes to low to mid rise housing with the aim to increase capacity for an additional 110,000 homes in well-serviced areas by the end of 2029
- Infrastructure contributions reforms – a program designed to ensure supporting infrastructure is aligned to housing delivery to support growing communities
- The Transport Oriented Development program, the first of which will deliver state-led rezonings within 1,200 metres of eight priority transport hubs. The second will deliver a new SEPP to increase the capacity for more mid-rise housing and mixed-use development within 400 metres of 31 other well-located transport hubs and town centres
- More affordable housing – the introduction of a new bonus Floor Space Ratio of up to 30 per cent and a height bonus of up to 30 per cent where a proposal includes a minimum of 15 per cent of the gross floor area as affordable housing
- Transparency – the state government has committed to publishing performance tables to identify best performing councils and to show the performance of government approval processes as well
“The NSW Government is not going to turn their back on housing, it’s a basic need,” Minister Scully said.
